...in which she takes over

He saw her and he had the entire 200 odd people spinning around him. He was simultaneously scaling heights of dizziness and the abysmal lows of the pits in his stomach. There was only one word for it. He was enamored and if he could even half describe how he felt, he would be Shakespeare minus the accented spellings.

He looked at his watch again. It was almost time. He inquired once more about the food he had ordered showing the urgency which was quite real just moments ago but had to be faked ever since she appeared and placed her order. She had come along with two of her friends, equally good, but somehow she just stood out in spite of not trying at all. Maybe it was her height or the features which swung dangerously between being termed mellow and stiff at the same time. She had the kind of features that get you bit roles in one of those Hollywood flicks about Egyptian queens where you die in the first reel and the special effects take over. In short, she had an aura about her, an elegance which somehow seemed totally out of place on the ninth floor of his office in the hustle of that food court.

He could not help glancing at her time and again quite oblivious to whether he was being discreet enough about it. He stole a quick glance at her ID but failed to get anything beyond some snatches of her name. He wished he had cheated more than he had in exams all his life. Suddenly he felt it all over again. The same exhilarating feeling he had around six years back when he first moved in to a co-ed. The blood rushed to his head. He knew he must be looking all red all over the face but he could not help it. He knew he was going to go nuts in a short while. The last thing he wanted was a distraction. She had provided just that and more and she was being pretty ruthless about it by the way.

Minutes later he was trying to eat and forget about her but his eyes were following her as if they were on their own. Sometimes it was difficult to even keep pace with her. She seemed to be just all over the place even when she was, well, being just static.

One look at her and it seemed that she was wonderfully aware of everything going around her. It was as if she already knew everything and was just playing it up so innocuously well. It was as if she knew how he was looking at her all the time, how he was going mad about her, how he was already masticating not on food but on plans of getting to know more about her. It was as if she was Luc Beson’s Fifth Element.

He saw her again the next day, same time and same place and there seemed to be a familiarity to their strangeness or it was just his high hopes. He just shrugged. He knew this was again going to be a case of Appetite Lost.

However, even as he shrugged, he could notice a firmness in it that usually comes with determination. He sighed.